Kenneth Porter wrote:
From <http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/>:
SpamAssassin is a mature, widely-deployed open source project that serves
as a mail filter to identify Spam. SpamAssassin uses a variety of
mechanisms including header and text analysis, Bayesian filtering, DNS
blocklists, and collaborative filtering databases. SpamAssassin runs on a
server, and filters spam before it reaches your mailbox.
One of the frequent complaints from end users is that SA blocked some
mail. And the standard answer is that SA doesn't block mail; some
*other* program uses the results of SA's analysis to filter mail.
So I suggest changing the wording of that paragraph to replace "filter"
with "classifier":
SpamAssassin is a mature, widely-deployed open source project that serves
as a mail classifier to identify Spam. SpamAssassin uses a variety of
mechanisms including header and text analysis, Bayesian filtering, DNS
blocklists, and collaborative filtering databases. SpamAssassin runs on a
server, allowing other programs to filter spam before it reaches your
mailbox.
I suspect the term "filter" was used because SA is indeed a "filter" in
the unix sense of a program that runs in a pipeline that transforms its
input. But that's a technical detail that doesn't really describe what
SA *does*.
I would submit that when the typical end-user reads the above
description of SA that it gets over their head and they stop reading
somewhere right after "...open source project that serves..."
If end users are complaining that SA blocked mail it's because the
admin, for reasons of linguistic convenience, has elected to use
easily-understood verbiage when describing how the e-mail system
works.
Users like it simple. They don't want to be told that "a collection
of programs made a group decision to block that message" They don't
want to be told "well, this program is a classifier, this program
is a transfer program, this program moves mail around as a result of
earlier classifiers" etc. etc.
They want to be told "your mail was blocked by a 'thang' and if your
missing mail, tell us about it"
If the admin substitutes the name SpamAssassin for "thang" then of
course the users will complain about SA.
Ted
